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Set permission for remote control

OA
Ozan Acikalin
JAMBO GmbH

Hello,

i have a tricky weird problem.

We are managing interactive whiteboards who are running android os. The android os does
not fully support the android enterprise management. Thats why we forced the installation
of the enterprise agent via adb on the device. We set the device owner for the agent and
after that we were able to enroll the device into mobicontrol. So far so good. The downside
of this method was that we could only remote view the device and not remote control.

Thanks to the MobiControl 15.0.1 agent udpate we were able to enable the remote control
support for those devices.

See here: https://discussions.soti.net/articles/remote-control-support-on-android-enterprise-without-requiring-oem-specific-capabilities-or-oem-specific-plugin

Now comes the weird part. After giving the permissions in the Accessibility i am able to
remote control the device. But after restarting the device i have to give the permission
again. I thought first it is because i am trying to manage an unsupported device. But after
few restarts the prompt for giving access disappears. I can remote control my device right
away.

I checked the logs and i noticed a log that says "Custom log (Accessibility permission has
been granted)". This log is shown every time i restarted my device. When it is not shown then
i have to give the permission manually. And that makes sense for me. That means mobicontrol
is able to set the permission remotely but somehow not always. It is also hard to reproduce this
weird behavior.

MobiControl is giving him self the following permissions:

  • Observe your actions
    Recieve notifications when you are interacting with an app
  • Retrieve window content
    Inspect the content of a window you are interacting with
  • Perform gestures
    Can tap, swipe, pinch, and perform other gestures

So i know i can set permissions with the command afw_set_permission_grant_state but i have
no experience with that command. I tried to find anything useful in the android enterprise
documentary but i think i could not find anything useful.

Does someone know how the command has to look like? I am pretty sure it is possible or
maybe with another command because MobiControl is sending a command to set those
permissions after each restart.

The device is running the agent version 15.1.3 and am using MC version 15.4.2.

The device is a no name brand and is running android 8 with no google services.

I hope someone has a clue! Thanks!

Remote Control
3 years ago
Android Scripting
ANSWERS
Z
ZPMOD@SOTI
3 years ago

Hello Ozan Acikalin,

Thanks for posting on SOTI Central,

Reviewing https://discussions.soti.net/articles/remote-control-support-on-android-enterprise-without-requiring-oem-specific-capabilities-or-oem-specific-plugin 

I see a coupe known limitations for enforce_rcaccessibility 1

  • Device User must accept the “Recording or Casting with MobiControl” prompt for each RC session to begin
  • If for any reason MobiControl Android agent crashes, then the device user will have to resolve the pending action again

Wondering if this is impacting the behavior you're seeing with the WhiteBoard

Regards,  

Technical Support | SOTI Inc. |1.905.624.9828 | support@soti.net | www.soti.net |

 

OA
Ozan Acikalin
3 years ago

Hello ZPMOD,

i saw those two lines in the known issues too. And i thought that might be the case for my board.

But i have one board (same model, os, agent version, MC server) who does not show those
problems. So it does not make sense for me why board 1 works perfectly fine without allowing
the permission each time the board restarts. But board 2 wants to get the permissions granted
each time it restarts.

Regarding the "Recording or Casting with MobiControl" prompt it comes always once. After
accepting the prompt it does not show up again. Just the prompt to grant the permissions under
the accessibility settings.

I see no crashes regarding the agent. When i turn on my board it gets shown online in my
webconsole. Even on the boards there are no signs of a agent crash.

Here is a screenshot from the prompt to allow the permission:


It redirects me to the accessibility settings to where i need to grant the permission:

And this prompt comes every time on board 1 but not on board 2 (same model)
after each restart or the next day.

OA
Ozan Acikalin
3 years ago

So we managed to set the permissions with adb. The command looks like this:

adb shell settings put secure enabled_accessibility_services net.soti.mobicontrol.androidwork/net.soti.mobicontrol.appops.accessibilityservice.AfwMobiControlAccessibilityService



This commands gives the mobicontrol agent the permission for the accessibility.

Now we need the possibility to send this kind of command via mobicontrol...

MB
Maximilian, Brand
2 years ago

Hello Ozan Acikalin, have you found a way to send this command via mobicontrol yet? Best Regards

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